Glow Scotland

August 17th, 2009

Graphic Novels CPD Event – Reminder

Katie Barrowman

Comments: none Tags: Tags: CPD, Edinburgh International book Festival, Glow Meet, graphic novels, Literacy, Mel Gibson
 : Categories Events, Glow Meet

This is just a quick reminder that Dr Mel Gibson will be speaking from the Edinburgh International Book Festival this Thursday from 17:00, and you can join her via Glow Meet – click on this link to go to the group.

Dr Gibson recently wrote the Learning and Teaching Scotland resource Graphic Novels in the Classroom, and those who join the meet can expect an inspiring hour, finding out what comics and graphic novels can do for young people.

If you’ve never use Glow Meet but are interested in getting involved, why not have a trial run beforehand? There will be a member of the Glow Team in the meeting room at the following times:

Tuesday 18th August:
10:00 – 11:00
13:00 – 14:00

Wednesday 19th August:
15:00 – 17:00

Drop in during any of those times to make sure you have access to Glow Meet. This helpsheet contains a few tips for getting started, and you’ll find a contact email within the group if you’re having difficulty accessing the Glow Meet.

We hope to see lots of you on Thursday for what will be a really interesting opportunity.

August 10th, 2009

Graphic Novels with Dr. Mel Gibson – CPD Event

Katie Barrowman

Comments: none Tags: Tags: CPD, Edinburgh International book Festival, Glow Meet, graphic novels, Literacy, Mel Gibson
 : Categories Events, Glow Meet

For all those interested in using Graphic Novels with their classes, there’s the chance to join an exciting CPD event via Glow Meet!

Dedicated academic Dr Mel Gibson recently wrote the Learning and Teaching Scotland resource Graphic Novels in the Classroom. Join this enthusiastic author for an inspiring hour of what comics and graphic novels can do for young people.

She is appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on Thursday the 20th of August at 17:00, with her talk entitled Visual Literacy, Learning & Graphic Novels. If you can’t make it along to the festival, you can hear Dr.Gibson’s talk live on Glow Meet, and there will be the chance to ask questions.

Go to the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s Glow Group for all the details on how to join in, and if you want to whet your appetite, check out the brilliant graphic novel resource, created by Dr. Gibson for LTS.

July 3rd, 2009

The Arts Get Glowing: Arts Across the Curriculum

Julia Fenby

Comments: 12 Comments » Tags: Tags: Anthony Horowitz, CfE, CPD, Glow, National glow groups, Partnerships, Scottish Book Trust, SLF
 : Categories Curriculum for Excellence

The Scottish Arts Council and Learning and Teaching Scotland have joined forces to bring arts education online through Glow. As a result of this partnership, a new post and project have been created to explore Glow’s potential to support innovative approaches to learning and teaching through the arts.

I have recently joined the Glow Team as Development Officer (Arts) and I’m hugely excited about this project’s potential to enable artists, performers and writers and Scotland’s schools to work and learn together in ways that have never been possible before. Glow is breaking down barriers and making learning experiences and opportunities more widely accessible – the recent Anthony Horowitz and Oscar Stringer Glow Meet events and the Willie Rodger print project are just a few examples of the exciting work that is already going on via Glow.

Over the next 22 months I will be working with selected Scottish Arts Council funded arts organisations on a number of ambitious demonstration projects, to be announced later this year, which will trial new ways of learning and will show how creativity and the arts are a fantastic way of supporting Curriculum for Excellence.

The project will provide CPD opportunities for both teachers and arts practitioners to work together to develop ideas, projects and resources. I am keen to make contact with teachers, cultural co-ordinators and local arts teams who would like to be involved so please do get in touch – I’ll be delighted to hear from you.

Look out for a new national Glow Group for the project which will highlight developments and opportunities providing a focal point for all related activity and a place to collaborate and share good practice. The project will also be showcased at the Scottish Learning Festival on 23 September.

Enquiries: glowenquiries@LTScotland.org.uk

Click here for press-release

Click here for FAQs

This post and project is funded through a partnership between Learning and Teaching Scotland and the Scottish Arts Council National Lottery Fund

June 1st, 2009

The EIS Learning Representatives New Glow group

mbrown

Comments: 1 Comment Tags: Tags: CPD, eis, laurie o'donnell, learning representatives, profile, simon macaulay, stephen mccrossan
 : Categories Glow Groups, Glow Meet

It was my pleasure to meet  with Simon MacAulay, Assistant Secretary and his staff from the Moray Place EIS offices, on Friday 29th May, in Optima. EIS Learning Representatives from across Scotland joined us at Learning and Teaching Scotland to take over their new National Glow group.

I have been supporting the Educational Institute of Scotland with Glow training since November 2008. This event was the culmination of that work. Appropriately, we started in Glow meet and with a recorded welcome message from Laurie O’Donnell, who has been closely involved with this project and has a long association with the EIS.

Stephen McCrossan spoke on behalf of the EIS staff to EIS Learning Representatives.  He asked them to use The EIS Learning Representatives Glow group to build a community of practice and promote CPD for Scottish teachers. The new Glow group was handed over to a packed classroom on Floor 7.  Those present were given the opportunity in our classroom to try out the new Glow group with workshops and discussions.

While this Glow group is only open to EIS Learning Reps and EIS staff, you can see it listed in the Staffroom in the National Site.  It is an excellent example of how Glow groups can support existing professional communities in Scottish Education. EIS Learning Reps can now communicate and collaborate with each other using a range of tools in Glow, such as the National Directory search facility (to find teachers), Glow meet and Glow chat.

Teachers can support the work that the EIS LRs are doing by adding useful professional information to their Personal Profiles at the bottom of their Homepage in Glow.  It would be helpful to EIS LRS if all EIS members added ‘EIS’ to their Personal Profile, by editing their ‘areas of interest’ – you can find out how to edit your profile on the GlowScotland website. This would allow EIS LRs to carry out advanced searches in Glow for EIS members. I look forward to seeing the EIS Glow community grow.

January 22nd, 2009

Google Earth, CPD and Glow Meet

mbrown

Comments: 4 Comments » Tags: Tags: CPD, Glow Meet, Google Earth
 : Categories Curriculum for Excellence

This event was a great success. Many thanks to all who took part in the free Google earth training on Monday 19th January. Thanks to those who came to the Optima in Glasgow for what was a unique experiment. 16 Geography teachers and 1 Modern Studies teacher from schools in Glasgow, Ayrshire, Highlands, Inverclyde, Dundee, Lanarkshire and East Renfrew:

John Ogilvie High School, Hillhead High School, James Hamilton Academy, Knightswood Secondary, Inverness Royal Academy, Nairn Academy, St. Stephens High School, Harris Academy, St. Thomas Aquinas RC Secondary School, Ardrossan Academy, St. Maurices High School, Calderside Academy, Johnstone High School, Broughton High School, Barrhead High School, Cleveden Secondary School.

Thanks also to our remote participants from, Aberdeenshire, Dundee, Glasgow, Inverclyde and Angus. A special thanks to Vicky Rogers from Angus who stayed to complete the whole day’s training in Glow meet and uploaded her Google earth tour complete with photographs of Friokheim into the Social Studies National glow Group.  While Mark Hagart, my colleague, was uploading screenshots of Google earth to the whiteboard in Glow meet I was sending messages to our virtual participants Vikky said: “this is a great example of nationally provided CPD” This is also a first for educators in Scotland. I hope Social Studies teachers will follow Vikky’s good example and share Google earth tours of their local area in Documents in the SSNGG. If you are not familiar with how to share Google earth files: download two guides to using Google earth from Documents in the Place and Environments tab.  Also look out for a  GE Glow Chat session soon.

Many thanks to our presenter, Jamie Buchanan-Dunlop who prepared well for the event and spoke clearly under more pressure than usual as he was being filmed by three different cameras, one of which was recording in Glow meet. You can find participant’s work on his website. The Glow team will be offering an edited version of this training for use by schools shortly.  Many thanks to Stuart Oliphant and Mark Hagart from the Glow team for their technical support with Glow meet. There was a great deal of technology and expertise involved in this event  but that does not mean that local authorities can not deliver good centrally organised CPD across their regions with Glow meet and with with less equipment. Stuart and Mark will take what they know about how to use the whiteboard for sharing information, how to improve video and audio in Glow meet and offer this to Local Authorites who intend to use this Glow tool for similar CPD events.

November 9th, 2008

Dumfries and Galloway – Way to Glow.

Katie Barrowman

Comments: 1 Comment Tags: Tags: CPD, Dumfries and Galloway, Glow, Schools
 : Categories Dumfries and Galloway, Local authorities, Uncategorized

I spent a fun two days in Dumfries and Galloway this week, taking part in three different events geared towards getting people onto and using Glow.

On Wednesday night, I joined the D&G Glow team for a Glow roadshow, where the cluster primary teachers gathered for a demo and introduction to Glow. There was a real buzz in the room (maybe a sugar rush from the lovely biscuits, but I think it was about Glow).

I was fortunate enough to work with some of the same teachers the next day in their own schools. We visited two primary schools, and got all the pupils from P4-7 logged into and playing with Glow. Any fears I had about this task being beyond the younger children were clearly unfounded, as they remembered every step from their short demo, and mostly managed to log on without issues. When one or two issues did arise, the excellent D&G Glow team were on hand to help out. The children had a chance to email their friends from Glow Mail and have a look around their school sites. They all seemed to love it, and were raring to get home and log on to the Glow Games. I was lucky enough to have the chance to talk to one of the classes, a Primary 3/4/5 in Moniaive Primary, about what other classes are doing with Glow around the country and I showed them some fun Glow Groups from Shetland and Aberdeenshire.

In the evening I joined the team in delivering a CPD event to teachers on the Glow communications tools, and the attendees discussed their own ideas for using these in the classroom and collaborating with each other. With the primary rollout just over halfway complete, and a fantastic local support team, Glow is gaining momentum in Dumfries and Galloway and everyone’s getting in on the act.

September 6th, 2008

BERA Conference

mbrown

Comments: 3 Comments » Tags: Tags: BERA, Borders, CPD, Glow
 : Categories Scottish Borders, Uncategorized

It was a privelege to be on the plenary panel at the BERA Conference Practioner Event, today. Thanks to Professor Vivienne Baumfiled for organising this and supporting teacher’s action research. The panel was asked to judge teachers action research projects and give our individual impressions of the day.  I commented on the key note speech by Ken Zeichner  and supported comments made by my colleague Con Morris. Ken described his theory on ‘third space’: where practice is not set against theory or academic against teacher but where the focus is on the research not the researcher. He exemplified his theory by referring to teachers who had confidently shared their action research on their own websites. Glow offers us the opportunity to use emerging technologys to improve action research and professional development in Scotland. We can build communities of professional learning and engage in professional conversations in Glow, about Glow and for a Curriculum for Excellence. 

I also saw a presentation about the Virtual Research Environment in AERS. This made me think  about the huge potential in Glow for teachers to connect with other teachers and share ideas for action research. For example by uploading or discussing research in the National Site. They now have the opportunity to use Glow tools to plan, design, research and store data. It is now easier than at any other time to collaborate across regional boundaries, make the most of virtual space and hopefully, third space theory. There are a wide range of tools in Glow which can be used or adapted for educational surveys, quantative and qualitative research.

Finally, congratulations to Lesley Wilson from St Boswells Primary School, for the best research project on display with BERA.  She has recently started on the Charterered Teacher Program.  It would be great if Lesley used Glow for future action research projects…. the Glow team will be in the Borders giving Mentor training at the end of September.